Requiem
by Jax Malcolm
Summary: (One-shot based on Night by Elie Wiesel.) At the brink of death, Juliek contemplates his situation and finds that sometimes the least logical decision is the best one to make.


There was death all around me: beside me, under me, and on top of me. At last, I could take no more of being buried alive. I tried to push the person on top of me; I wanted nothing more than to pull myself free for a breath of somewhat fresher air. I spoke as loudly as I could to those above me, but I never thought that the person there could have been a corpse.

"You're crushing me! Mercy!"

I received no response from the person above me. By then, the smell of those around me entered my nostrils and formed a hard ball in my throat. The stench of rotting and unwashed bodies was almost unbearable, as was the pain of the weight of the beast above me.

"You're crushing me! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"

He moved to allow me to do the same. Relieved, I clawed my way upwards with my free hand (as my other held my only possession of worth left in this world) to be beside him.

"Juliek, is it you?" the creature's voice asked me.

I remembered that voice, and I made my response. "Eliezer... the twenty-five strokes of the whip. Yes... I remember."

Together, we fell silent. For a long time, there was nothing between us. I could hear nothing but the groans all around me – groans like wistful ghosts coming from the grave. I could smell the dead, decaying flesh of those vessels the spirits had desperately departed just as well as I could smell the excrements of the living. The entire room was dark, like a coffin or a mass grave of hundreds buried deep beneath the earth, but I could still make out the outlines of the skeletons filling the room. I could even sense the bitter taste of death in the air.

Finally, Eliezer spoke again. "Juliek! Can you hear me, Juliek?"

"Yes," I replied. I could tell that I was getting weaker by the moment: my body felt heavier, and my voice became faint and distant. "What do you want?"

He asked me how I felt, and I replied that I was alright. Alright! What a condition in these times! Yet "alright" was no longer the same word to me as it had been back in my life of peace. Instead of bearing a meaning of happiness, during our time as slaves for the S.S., "alright" meant "still alive."

I mentioned my violin – my most prized possession – to the young Eliezer and explained that I took it with me. My arms wrapped around the wooden objects like they were my children – and they were, in a sense. They were one of the few things I had kept since the old days far too many years ago. Had it been only years? I felt the weight of an eternity on my bones as I cradled my wooden children and struggled to grasp the faded memories of another life that felt so distant that they became that of stranger, rather than myself.

At that moment, I realized that Eliezer remained silent throughout those eternal minutes. That was fine because I wished to think rather than speak.

I knew that I would not be alive the next morning to march to wherever the S.S. wished to take us. My pain was too great, and I was too weak. I could feel Death itself rise from another liberated soul somewhere nearby and walk slowly towards me. But perhaps it would be better if I died there, rather than in the crematory or in a line or whatever else Hitler had planned for all of us.

The pains of sadness filled my heart as I felt Death creep slowly towards me. I picked my violin in preparation to have her sing to tell Death to take me swiftly. And thus, I put the bow to her strings and played. For many years, my violin sang to make me happy, and for that precious moment, she sang one of Beethoven's best beautifully. The tune that floated into my ears revealed the truth: she knew how resigned I was right then. I had nothing more within me and no motivation to continue. In my mind, the fight had been over for days, yet I still refused to surrender to the Nazis or, even moreso, death. Yet now, the knowledge that I would die either now or not long in the near future haunted me, and only right then was I willing to accept it.

Admittedly, my decision at that very moment – to do nothing more than play as I waited for Death to take my hand – could be considered almost insane. I have no doubt that I was mad before I departed, yet it no longer mattered. Soon, those thoughts of dying fled from my mind as did the notes from my fingers. Already, I was at peace.

I never reached the last note. Instead, I set my violin down at my side and closed my eyes. It was my greeting to Death as he knelt beside me.


End file.
